Azusa school learns about Holocaust through Butterfly Project

The Butterfly Project, sponsored by the Holocaust Museum Houston, is collecting butterflies representing the children who died in concentration camps during World War II. (Courtesy of Elaine Stricklin)

Samantha Aguilar knows about heartbreak. The 16-year-old has had her share of youthful crushes, boyfriends and breakups. So when she read "Forgotten," a poem about a boy who wonders if his old girlfriend still remembers him fondly, Samantha understood the feeling behind the verse.

The only difference was, the anonymous poet was a child's words from some 70 years ago, half a world away in a Nazi concentration camp.

"I know that, every time I had a relationship with a guy and had something happen, it was heartbreaking," she said. "It broke my heart to know how he (the writer) felt."

Samantha was reading and interpreting the poem recently as part of Sierra High School's participation in a global project inspired by the children of the Holocaust. Organized as a joint venture between history teacher Brent Bowling and art teacher Elaine Stricklin, the Azusa Unified students decorated butterflies as a tribute to the more than 1 million Jewish children who died in concentration camps during World War II.

Sponsored by the Holocaust Museum Houston, the Butterfly Project aims to collect 1.5 million handmade butterflies to represent each of the children who perished at the hands of the Nazi regime. The effort stems from a poem written by Pavel Friedmann in June 1942 at the Terezin Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia. Born in Prague in 1921, Pavel died in Auschwitz on Sept. 29, 1944, according to records from the State Jewish Museum in Prague.

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His poem, "The Butterfly," was found in a suitcase full of artwork and poetry that was recovered from the camp.

Each student was assigned a poem and given the materials to decorate a butterfly. While Stricklin usually has a pattern for her art projects, she decided to give the students free rein when designing their artwork.

"I wanted each of the butterflies to be unique, like snowflakes," Stricklin said. "I gave them triangles of construction paper, samples of sponge paint and each table had a basketful of supplies for the students to use."